Elsa Rodrigues is an Associate Professor at Faculty of Pharmacy Universidade de Lisboa and a PI at iMed.ULisboa. During her Doctoral studies at Maria Celeste Lechner’s lab at IGC and FFUL, in collaboration with Patrick Maurel (Unité INSERM 128), she elucidated transcriptional mechanisms involved in gene regulation of liver-specific Cytochrome P450 genes. Elsa’s lab main goal is to characterize regulatory pathways involved in brain cholesterol homeostasis, and therefore to provide a basis for the development of therapeutic approaches for diseases that stretch from genetic disorders, such as Niemann Pick Type C, to neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s Disease. Her focus has been on the potential beneficial modulation of cholesterol homeostasis through ectopic expression or pharmacological up-regulation/ activation of the neuronal specific cholesterol 24-hydroxylase encoded by the cytochrome P450 CYP46A1 gene, and by targeting transcriptional regulators involved in the control of brain cholesterol homeostasis.